GALWAY SURVIVED THE concession of a spate of late goals against Tipperary to reach next Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final with Kerry and captain Paul Conroy admitted his relief after his side’s victory.
“We’re relieved really,” Conroy told Sky Sports after tonight’s Round 4 qualifier win in Tullamore. ”With 20 minutes to go, we were cruising but we were shaky towards the end there and conceded a lot of soft goals which isn’t good enough at this level. So we’re relieved to get through.
“Mentally I suppose you think you’ve the game won and that creeps into lads heads. That was half the reason we were shaky in the last few minutes. We’ve a lot of work to do. We struggled with the runners against Tipp. Kerry are a good side and we’ll have a lot to do to be up to their level.”
Manager Alan Mulholland admitted that he had mixed feelings after the game with the joy of the victory tempered by the disappointment of their late collapse.
“I’m very happy to have won the game. Any sort of a victory coming up here. It was a 50-50 game coming in, that’s what the betting had it. Coming out by a point we would have been happy.
“Having said that and having reflected on the game, getting ourselves in to a winning position and then conceding four goals at the weekend. Maybe we got too defensive, I’m not sure.
“Going to play Kerry in Croke Park, we’re going to need to improve. We were trying to keep Tipperary goalless, we had talked about that. We are disappointed with that.”
Still Galway can look forward to a first All-Ireland quarter-final in six years and Mulholland is in a positive frame of mind looking ahead to next Sunday’s game.
“You take it, we’ve got a victory, we’re going to Croke Park, we’re going to play Kerry and it’s a great thing to be looking forward to. The two teams were in similar positions. Both reasonably young sides, a lot of underage talent and trying to make that breakthrough.
“We had beaten Tipperary last year, if the scoreline had been reversed it would have been a negative for us. We’ve been trying for a while with this group of players, we’re happy to be one step further.”
